I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching
glimpses, as if by broken lights from hell, of the
life behind—­the wrecked hope, the shattered
faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last
turned into one.

Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again.
The woman looked at her with the same look as before—­not
so much a smile as a sort of haggard radiance.

Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath
into baby’s face, and stretching out a coarse
fat finger she tickled her under the chin.

Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing
this the woman’s eyes sparkled like sunshine.

“See that,” she cried. “S’elp
me Jesus, I b’lieve I could ’ave been good
meself if I’d on’y ’ad somethink
like this to keer for.”

I am not ashamed to say that more than once there
had been tears in my eyes while the woman spoke, though
her blasphemies had corrupted the air like the gases
that rise from a dust-heap. But when she touched
my child I shuddered as if something out of the ’lowest
depths had tainted her.

Then a strange thing happened.

I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely
support me, and was folding my little angel closely
in my arms, when the woman rose too and said:

“You wouldn’t let me carry your kiddie
a bit, would you?”

I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know
not what The woman looked at me again, and after a
moment she said:

“S’pose not. On’y I thought
it might make me think as ‘ow I was carryin’
Billie.”

That swept down everything.

The one remaining window of the woman’s soul
was open and I dared not close it.

I looked down at my child—­so pure, so sweet,
so stainless; I looked up at the woman—­so
foul, so gross, so degraded.

There was a moment of awful struggle and then . .
. the woman and I were walking side by side.

And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street.

NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER

At five o’clock I was once more alone.

I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now)
under the statue which is at the back of Bow Church.

I thought I could walk no farther, and although every
penny I had in my pocket belonged to Isabel (being
all that yet stood between her and want) I must borrow
a little of it if she was to reach Mrs. Oliver’s
that night.